Dandelion Wine (32 page)
He looked from the high window at the land where the crickets were strewn like dried figs in the creek beds, at a sky where birds would wheel south now through the cry of autumn loons and where trees would go up in a great fine burning of color on the steely clouds. Way out in the country tonight he could smell the pumpkins ripening toward the knife and the triangle eye and the singeing candle. Here in town the first few scarves of smoke unwound from chimneys and the faint faraway quaking of iron was the rush of black hard rivers of coal down chutes, building high dark mounds in cellar bins.
But it was late and getting later.
Douglas in the high cupola above the town, moved his hand.
“Everyone, clothes off!”
He waited. The wind blew, icing the windowpane.
“Brush teeth.”
He waited again.
“Now,” he said at last, “out with the lights!”
He blinked. And the town winked out its lights, sleepily, here, there, as the courthouse clock struck ten, ten-thirty, eleven, and drowsy midnight.
“The last ones now ⦠there ⦠there ⦔
He lay in his bed and the town slept around him and the ravine was dark and the lake was moving quietly on its shore and everyone, his family, his friends, the old people and the young, slept on one street or another, in one house or another, or slept in the far country churchyards.
He shut his eyes.
June dawns, July noons, August evenings over, finished, done, and gone forever with only the sense of it all left here in his head. Now, a whole autumn, a white winter, a cool and greening spring to figure sums and totals of summer past. And if he should forget, the dandelion wine stood in the cellar, numbered huge for each and every day. He would go there often, stare straight into the sun until he could stare no more, then close his eyes and consider the burned spots, the fleeting scars left dancing on his warm eyelids; arranging, rearranging each fire and reflection until the pattern was clear....
So thinking, he slept.
And, sleeping, put an end to Summer, 1928.
Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines
Bradbury Speaks
Bradbury Stories
The Cat's Pajamas
Dandelion Wine
Dark Carnival
Death Is a Lonely Business
Driving Blind
Fahrenheit 451
Farewell Summer
From the Dust Returned
The Golden Apples of the Sun
A Graveyard for Lunatics
Green Shadows, White Whale
The Halloween Tree
I Sing the Body Electric!
The Illustrated Man
Journey to Far Metaphor
Kaleidoscope
Let's All Kill Constance
Long After Midnight
The Machineries of Joy
The Martian Chronicles
A Medicine for Melancholy
The October Country
One More for the Road
One Timeless Spring
Quicker Than the Eye
R Is for Rocket
S Is for Space
Something Wicked This Way Comes
The Stories of Ray Bradbury
The Toynbee Convector
When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed
Yestermorrow
Zen in the Art of Writing
Small portions of this book have appeared as follows: “Season of Sitting” in
Charm,
copyright 1951 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc.; “A Story About Love” in
McCalls's;
“The Swan” in
Cosmopolitan
; “The Magical Kitchen” in
Everywoman's.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book was previously published by Avon Books in 1999, reprinted by William Morrow in 2006.
DANDELION WINE.
Copyright © 1946, 1947, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1957 by Ray Bradbury. Copyright © 1956,1957 by The Curtis Publishing Company. Introduction copyright © 1975 by Ray Bradbury. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information please write: Special Markets Department, HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-93914
ISBN-13: 978-0-380-97726-0
ISBN-10: 0-380-97726-5
Epub Edition © May 2013 ISBN: 9780062242273
10 QUM 20 19 18 17 16
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